Media Bias – The Challengers don’t like to be Challenged

Media bias reflects the fact that most of the major media organizations have their own agenda. It starts with unrestrained free trade and ends in the hope that everyone will benefit. Donald Trump has pricked their balloon, and they don’t like it. In fact, they are highly embarrassed that their complicity in the current economic malaise is being exposed by an “outsider.”

Media Bias – A Western Pattern

I listen to PBS, France24 & the Australian ABC. Also I read the (UK) Financial Times, the Australian Fairfax press and the Australian. All except for the later, which has a reasonably 2-sided presentation, treat Donald Trump as a punching bag (especially the government funded national broadcaster, “our ABC”). None of them like it when Donald Trump punches back. I say, it is about time that the media is held accountable for their biased reporting.

Media bias is obvious to any objective observer. As an historian, I know that history is a matter of selection – what will be included – what will be excluded. We know what the media are including. Today I listened to the NewsHour “debate” between Mark Shields and David Brooks. As today’s show demonstrates, the two contributors and the host were keen to highlight anything that puts Donald Trump in a bad light. Here are just a few examples:

“Not enough positions with confirmable candidates have been confirmed.” That is not Donald Trump’s fault. It reflects more directly on the action of Democratic Senators, not a failure on Donald Trump’s part. If the Democrats are holding up appointments (for good or spurious reasons), the delay cannot be put solely at Donald Trump’s feet, but that is what the 2 debaters and the host did today.

The disgraceful situation where leading figures in the intelligent community are openly passing on confidential information to press was not criticized once in this discussion. These leakers should be prosecuted as Obama tried to do with Snowden, and has done with Manning. Yet this was not mentioned as a caveat to the discussion on the “Russian situation.”

The implication that Trump is a boy in a man’s job, which came from Mark Shields, will be shown to be a nonsense. It is just out of the current Media Bias play-book. Rather than Donald Trump not being up to the job, he is willing to address the ridiculous situation when US workers on $7.50 and hour or more have to compete for their jobs with Mexican workers on $15 day, whereas neither the Democrats or the pre-Trump Republicans even thought this was an issue that could be addressed.

Trump was willing to bell the cat on the impossible situation in the West Bank, which cannot be solved via a 2-state solution (since that region has been permanently cantonized by settlements for over 20 years), despite official UN approval of this ridiculous approach. Diplomacy has failed the world here and also in Syria, with the attempt to replace a stable government with one that is likely to be led by Saudi-influenced Sunni radicals.

Where is the discussion of the breath of fresh air that Donald Trump has brought to such matters? Nowhere to be seen on PBS, France24, Aust ABC, Aust Fairfax or in the Financial Times. Apart from resistance to his necessary and economically compelling agenda, we just have complaints about Donald Trump pushing back against a constant media onslaught. Certainly the media do not want anything like a level playing field and are not willing to even think about the possibility of Media Bias from their own organizations.

End Media Bias for your own good

My advice to the so-called Main Stream Media, is “Grow up.” Learn from the election result. Donald Trump won the electoral college by a thumping majority. Surprise, surprise: the liberal elites lost the election. Their mutual love-in, led by Barack Obama and for which Hillary Clinton was their default candidate, which has seen ordinary working people lose their jobs while others earn an extraordinary rate of pay, has been dispatched by democratic forces.

In addition, we can say that the expectation of Mark Shields that Trump will lose electoral support is a dream. The US economy has already turned the corner, and that has been just on the anticipation that Trump will put his plans into operation. Just be aware that when the numbers on the economy come in at the end of this year, the media will change their clothes, because if they do not, they will be all out of job and new media will take the place of the current media.